Letters for personal catharsis

Barking Mad

It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new 5:30 a.m. to get up and face. WTF? I thought for SURE I’d sleep for at least 8 hours. C’mon! My body feels like dead weight I’m shifting around it’s so goddamn tired. No 8 hours shut-eye? No?

Mega mega mega. Mega mania? Naw, had it worse. Just antsy. Terribly antsy. My MIND wants to get up and pace; my BODY can’t leave the chair (or bed; it was just the bed, now it’s the chair. Take your pick). These are the days I wish I was still in a 20 something body. Blow through it and STILL go out tonight.

Yesterday should be encapsulated in one of those snow globes for me. It was a damn nice day, in every sense of the word. The temp hit a comfortable 18C, the sun was shining, George was happy to see me, and my bro suggested Indian takeaway as a dinner treat (YUM!). Funny side note – my bro suggested take away ‘because the phone call came in’; I was flexing my muscles and going ‘hell yeah! hard swim – I deserve a treat’. Funny how we chose what seemed most important to each of us.

My Goddess, the world is spinning and THIS time, it seems, the spin might actually work in my favor. I’ve gotta spew some rainbows here – apologies, but the penny’s been showing face up lately, not face down. Got notice that half the debt to my uncle is now paid back; the wire transfer went through and he got the cash without a hiccup. It was supposed to be a six month loan, which became a year long loan, which is now stuttered out into next year so we can get past the holidays without resorting to selling matches on the street corner. It’s a huge weight on my conscience, so to pull half of it off my back in one go is a BIG relief. Speaking of weight – no, I haven’t been scale hopping – I’ve lost some. Been feeling like that whale of a stomach has been a bit smaller, so I measured last night before passing out with exhaustion. I’ve lost 7 centimeters on my stomach (that’s about 2- 2 1/2 inches). It’s no longer a whale, just a Michelin tyre. Yippee! Did not measure my hips because I didn’t want to spoil the news by finding out my hips haven’t lost anything yet…probably not the case, but I didn’t want to take the chance. My Dutch is progressing; I now watch Sesame Street and every once in a while an entire sentence pops out. It’s kind of: yadda yadda yadda Hello my name is Anna. How are you? yadda yadda. My brain is learning, even if I feel stoopid.

So let’s talk about the phone call ’cause I’ve noticed how for a couple of days in a row I’m just mentioning this whole counseling thing and then blowing right past it. Seems I can dance quite well on the page, despite having two left feet in real life. …Fuck. Other assorted curse words. That’s what my head is saying; it don’t want to spill nuttin’ this morning. Tight lipped motherfucker. I KNOW my anxiety is high right now; the whole hysterical laughter thing tells me that. Damned if I can access it. Must have shoved it right down the u-bend. Behind the anxiety over language, behind the financial anxiety and the body anxiety.

Okay. Blah got me to open up and spill my guts in a comment; that comment deserves to be written down here and admitted to: I self-hurt. I slap myself. I do all sorts of dancing on this subject: oh, I take it out in exercise, no I don’t really hurt myself on PURPOSE. Yeah. Right. The truth is I slap myself on the face. It happened the other day and I saw out of the corner of my eye the LOOK I got – horrified. Someone was fucking horrified that I slapped myself across the face. *shudder* I still don’t want to admit that’s self-hurt. I want to say I’m jogging my memory, or correcting a verbal glitch (I do it most often when I stumble over words). But I saw the look. Hello, my name is Beeps, and I self-harm…

My mind is made up. The docs and counselors may insist I stop toking while they try meds out on me. I’m freaking a bit with that, but I refuse to say ‘I’ve given up toking’. I’ll just be on a temporary hiatus. I love herb too much to chuck it all away. For fucks sake! I TRUST that toking will calm me, settle me down. I don’t trust anything else right now. I’m especially nervous of having to go all cold turkey around my bro. He doesn’t deserve ANY backlash that may come out of me. Really, docs! You want me to go through this; you should have to go through it with me. In the room, 24/7.

I’m borrowing trouble again. Not there yet. Calm the fuck down and smoke a bit!

Maybe this is why my brain has nothing to say about the phone call: I’m doing my best to (once again) have ZERO expectations. It’s just someone wanting to ask me some questions. Though I doubt they’ll be as fun to answer as Steph’s Qs in the Leibster Award. That was uber fun; she made me put on my creative fedora (I wear fedoras; they look uber cool on me). I’d answer stuff like that all day. Is there a job out there like that?

On to real life. Classes are back in session. This week, for the first time, the schedule doesn’t intimidate me. If I can power swim for a full hour two days in a row and NOT fall asleep for an evening nap (having KICKED my 6 p.m. coffee habit), than I can do my classes. Time to stop questioning and absorb. Put on that dog face – the quizzical half turn of the head – when I don’t understand. Woof! Woof! I should probably walk around my entire life with that tilt of the head.

ROFL!!! He scares me too! lol! Not sure what he is, but when I googled ‘barking mad’ he was top of the heap. And rightly so!

Pffft! I’ll drop the smoking long enough to get a feel sans herbage for what the meds do. But full time, forever? Bite my motherfuckin’ ass. My GP told me I can refuse ANY medication at any time. I’ll be keeping THAT in mind during my appointments – and during my medication trials.

Hells bells, I really must train up George. He could fly some over to you. 😉

Yes, you are barking mad. Or no you aren’t. Idk lol. At one stage last year I read every possible thing I could find that defined the thing they all call madness and the common consensus seemed to be madness = psychosis. I can understand why that definition worked back in the days of miracles and oracles and wonder, but it makes no sense to me now.

I LIKE using ‘mad’ rather than ‘crazy’ or ‘unstable’ or whatever PC term they come up with. Mad sends a shiver down my spine; mad is exciting and unpredictable. Mad people do fun things, like jumping in puddles during a rainstorm or doing something JUST BECAUSE. I LIKE that.

Currently a final year English student at the University of Cambridge. Producing Intern for Fuel Theatre July-October 2016. Aspiring Arts Administrator/Theatre Producer, blogging about my projects (mostly).

#ActuallyAutistic - An Aspie obsessed with writing. This site is intend to inspire through sharing stories & experiences. The opinions of the writers are their own. I am just an Autistic woman - NOT a medical professional.